SCL-IPC award seats?
 

I've booked a trip next year into EZE and out of GIG. We then decided we'd like to see IPC during our visit.

I want to use BA Avios, but looking at availability particularly SCL-IPC-SCL there's only a few days available during our trip in April.

So my question is - are more award seats likely to be released and if so, roughly when? Or should I grab whatever I can find now as it probably won't improve?

I appreciate I may be asking the equivalent of next week's lottery numbers, but I don't know anything about LAN's award program and I thought I'd ask the experts! Thanks for any insights.

At least you found some!

Looking for March\April next year and absolutely zilch!

What dates did you find and are they still there?

LAN typically deploys the 767s that are in the 30C/191Y configuration on the SCL-IPC-SCL route. However by April of next year the overwhelming majority of LAN's 767s will feature the 18C/220Y configuration...

I wonder why. I have flown the route 8 times and 20 seat business class has always been completely full.

The 787-8s are progressively being deployed on routes that currently feature the 767s with the 30C/191Y configuration, i.e. SCL-GRU, SCL-LIM-LAX, SCL-MEX, SCL-MIA etc. The 787-8s will free up some of the 30C/191Y configured 767s that LAN will soon transfer over to TAM. Also, LAN just phased out two of the oldest 767s in the fleet that featured the less dense configuration...

The best option to get SCL-IPC-SCL is 330/331 days in advance, otherwise you will have to check every single day (3 times a day).
They usually release 7 (or 5) in J, and 7 in Y, but most of the time they remove those seats for AVIOS/AA awards miles, but you may find it on LAN.com (lower level awards) for a couple of days. My advice, check with Lanpass, if you find lower level awards (25K KM each way), then you check on BA.com

Which shows no availability :td:

So you RING Ba-Who cannot see the lowest availability :td:

Pathetic :mad:

You may not see it on BA.com, but you can call them and ask to make a long-sell, only few agents will know how to do it, I did it with 4M flights which is one of the hardest to get (or see it) with BA and AA ;).

So the magic word is "Long-sell" ?

Twice I've rung and neither agent could see the availability I c ould on LANpass.

I'll give that a try.^

Yes, when they have to do a Long Sell everything is manually entered, like flight number, flight date, booking class, etc. This doesn't mean that they will be able to do it, but if you see it on lan.com (lowest award price only), it should be available for AA, BA or QF, but just in case, if you don't see it on BA.com, try Qantas.com trough awardnexus, which is free for FT users (100 points every 90 days).

I'm curious blindman, did you try the long sell and did it work? I too am looking at this route for next summer, but I am not seeing anything and nor are AA agents I called.

In the end I did not try to get any flights as I re-evaluated my time in South America and I re-jigged my plans to miss Easter Island. :(
Spending more time in Machu Picchu ;)

It would seem the only way to certainly get reward tickets is to sign up to Amex\SPG get points and transfer them to LAN.

BA reward booking search is useless -as is the call centre- IMHO.

One thing I did pick up though is if you actually book a cash fare through LAN then select the home country as Chile-The prices plummett and apparently you can book legitimately.

Good luck.

Thanks for the tip, indeed a round-trip ticket in Y is only $390 when booked through LAN chile, as opposed to ~$450 on LAN US/ kayak. I want to go one-way, however, and continue to PPT and back to LAX/SFO. One way price is almost the same as roundtrip ($370). Would be great to burn 12.5k BA miles instead of $370...I might try calling and see if any agents know what a long sell is.

You need to find it on Lan.com first. Anyway,I have been looking for some seats in the last couple of weeks (just testing), they are opening PPT-IPC/IPC-PPT 7 to 21 days in advance. Take a look, you can find some awards for tomorrow and next week.

I see a good chunk of lowest level availability (50km) on Lan.com, but for the exact same dates ba.com is not showing any flights. I think this is the problem that was earlier alluded to. I will try calling ba, though they are only open while I'm at work :mad: and I'm not looking to talking to their agents.